BEIRUT: Lebanon’s leading Christian political party has publicly urged Hezbollah to surrender its weapons to the state as the army prepares to implement a government-ordered disarmament plan.
The Iran-backed militant group has been severely weakened by a year-long conflict with Israel, including two months of open warfare that destroyed significant portions of its arsenal and decimated its leadership.
Under substantial pressure from the United States, the Lebanese government ordered its military in August to prepare a comprehensive plan for disarming the group by the end of this year.
Samir Geagea, head of the Lebanese Forces and parliament’s main Christian bloc, declared that Hezbollah’s weapons had produced “no impact” against Israel while bringing only “destruction, ruin, displacement and invited new occupation”.
“The shortest path to ending Israeli occupation and aggression, my brothers, is building a real state… and there can be no true state as long as illegal weapons remain,“ he added while calling for “all weapons to return to the Lebanese state”.
“Your war with Israel was lost and destructive… a civil war would be even more disastrous and could cause you to lose everything.”
Hezbollah remains the only faction that retained its weapons following Lebanon’s 1975-1990 civil war and has consistently rejected disarmament while accusing authorities of serving Israeli and American interests.
“It’s still possible to break this cycle and avoid further losses by making the courageous choice to move from illegality to legitimacy,“ Geagea stated while accusing Hezbollah of serving “an Iranian expansionist project”. – AFP
